Toshiba recently announced a new A19 LED lamp that is shaped more like an incandescent than some of the other LED bulbs we’ve seen so far, excluding perhaps Panasonic’s LED with a filament appearance. The new bulb is dimmable, available in 2700K and 4000K colors, outputs 450 lumens, and contains no lead or mercury. The 40-watt replacement uses 8.4 watts and reaches full brightness instantly.

I received an email about a “new” product that I thought I’d pass along. Tell me what you think about this far-infrared heating panel that can applied to a wall or ceiling and run through an electrical outlet. Made by Prestyl, the panel incorporates a “reliable French thin-film technology that has been used in aircraft, ships, trains, homes and public buildings overseas for nearly 16 years,” according to a company release.

I recently read about an impressive, three-unit residential building in Portland, Maine through an article by Seth Koenig in the Bangor Daily News. After a little digging, I learned the project is spearheaded by Paul Ledman and Colleen Myers, as owners and developers, Mike White of Island Carpentry, the general contractor, and Kaplan Thompson Architects, the architectural firm. Ledman wanted a future-forward building and ended up with something that doesn’t use fossil fuels.

What can you do if you’d like to use an energy efficient light bulb, but you think that they look funky? How about a LED bulb that looks and functions almost exactly like an incandescent filament bulb?

Start-up Aeroseal has been getting decent media exposure lately with a writeup on Energy.gov and a listing on This Old House‘s Top 100 Best New Home Products of 2011. The company has an exclusive license to technology originally developed within the Indoor Environment Program at the Energy Department’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. In short, Aeroseal sends a sealing mist through air ducts to eliminate holes and cracks of up to 5/8th of an inch — resulting in improved comfort and energy savings.

Earlier this week, the Shelton Group released its seventh annual Energy Pulse report, which has 450 pages of analysis, charts, graphs, and crosstabs based on the survey of 1,502 Americans. I haven’t seen the $5,000 report but would like to share some takeaways from a release and executive summary. Particularly, of the respondents, 42% had installed high-efficiency windows, 39% had installed extra insulation, 37% had installed higher efficiency HVAC systems, and 24% had installed a higher efficiency water heater.